"I was the youngest person at the State Museum when I was hired and I was the oldest when I retired," said Bielinski, 67, an Albany native who is founder and director of the Colonial Albany Social History Project that he put online starting in 1999. A self-taught programmer, he published books and articles and created more than 4,000 linked Web pages with millions of words describing ordinary people who lived and worked in Albany in the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries.

He left Albany in the mid-1960s, "hating it and saying I was never coming back," only to return in 1970, when he took a job as a curator at the State Museum. "I had every job you can have there and I loved it," he said. "They sent me all around, they educated me and I got to meet every kind of historian. I learned so much from them."

Bielinski ran a conference on New York state history for 25 years and paid it forward.

"He launched many careers from his office, including my own," said Tricia Barbagallo, research associate for the project and lecturer in the history department at the University at Albany. She worked with her mentor for 27 years. "I'm feeling kind of blue over the end of an era."

She added, "I got great training from him and I use it every day. He truly appreciates the value of history and that the history of the common man is the real history of Albany."

She said that thousands of genealogists across the nation cite Bielinski's research on ancestry.com.

Bielinski said he plans to add to the history project and to teach community history in retirement. "I've got enough material for several lifetimes of work," he said.